Yes, it's difficult to pull women characters out from a book that's over fifty years old and about war and fighting. Creating characters will pull from the original book and piss off the fans.

Meanwhile, current fantasy/sci-fi includes The Hunger Games with a strong female lead and female characters. There is Alien with Ridley and Braveand no doubt several other more modern books with better integrated characters when it comes to gender, sex and race. Don't get your unisex undergarments in a twist because old literature reflects the worldview of the time.

About the only thing I really miss about WoW is playing my female dwarf. Since almost no one else played them at all, much less as their main, it made it a little special. And they have the best flirt lines in the game.

Vigorous_Apathy:Because it's a story about Stuff Happening, not People Whining About Their Feelings.

I hate People Whining About Their Feelings stories. Especially those farking cop dramas. Boohoo, your old partner betrayed you to the Mob and you feel conflicted about the informer you befriended. Man up and shoot some people.

miniflea:taurusowner: It was never confirmed that Bombadil was a Maia.

It wasn't, but what else could he be? For the record, I'm a big enough Tolkien fan that I reread the books roughly once a year or so, and most of the time i skip Bombadil's chapter.

I also don't really mind Arwen's expanded role in the films.

I apply the looks like the duck, talks like a duck philosophy to Bombadil as well. The only other argument I've seen is that he's some sort of natural phenomena of a species or type different from all other Godlike creatures. There really isn't much precedent for that, so I highly doubt it.

miniflea:taurusowner: It was never confirmed that Bombadil was a Maia.

It wasn't, but what else could he be?

Tolkien believed the world contained mysteries that could never be understood. He intended Tom Bombadil to be the personification of that view. Any conclusions about Bombadil's nature beyond "unknown" are necessarily incorrect.

I'd be surprised if Emil Johansson doesn't get cease and desist orders for this project, from what I know of the Tolkien estate.

BTW, Tolkien himself disliked Hollywood. I've never read anything about why he was willing to sell movie rights for his books. Also, he intended his work to be something of an English mythology. Of course one of the main characteristics of myth is that it evolves as it permeates folk culture, and people regularly revise and reimagine it.

Didn't Tolkien write something about how the few female dwarves that existed, many of them grew beards, or at least were able to if they wanted to? I felt that was his way of saying they are difficult to tell from the males.

I was going to write a parody Tumblr social justice post but I can't work my mind into that same frothy, recursive logictrap stream-of-consciousness style that they manage to- wait wait, maybe I

To say that we "social justice warriors" as the anti-SW crowd calls us shouldn't extend our aims to defending fictional races is a narrow position that only serves to marginalize real races and peoples. To not point out the privilege of the men of Middle Earth and their wanton demonization of the orcs who were not made "dull" and "twisted" (who are we to judge orcs on such culturally-relative value judgements?) out of choice but rather they were mutilated and tortured into it their forms would be as insensitive as not pointing out that current educational accomplishment rates of blacks is reflective of centuries of oppression.

GET farkING OVER IT!! Pride and Prejudice has only girls and effete men, nobody cares.

What's next? Going to complain about the lack of females in farking Predator?

There's now a massive gap in what men and women watch. Men watch movies, women watch TV. Turn on TV shows like Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives and men are basically one-dimensional props. And I don't care if that's what women want to watch, but don't go making a point about what men watch too.

Ed Willy:Don't get your unisex undergarments in a twist because old literature reflects the worldview of the time.

Meh, I just saw that as the curtain JRRT hid behind. It's screamingly obvious he's downright allergic to female characters, so he covered up this weakness by making the books a sausage fest. His best female characters are basically serviceable variations of his male characters trapped in women's bodies (Eowyn until Faramir neutered her into boring shlock, Galadriel); Arwen is an effin' wallflower. He wasn't gonna push the bubble on this one and I'm glad he didn't try. The books have enough issues without picking up every progressive banner and despite being rather two-dimensional (how much dimension can you put in a bit role anyway), Galadriel is a two-dimensional badass.

Eh, no. Beorn was just a bad-assed shapeshifter in the animal sense, not in the "I take whatever form I wish" sense. He also had a child before he died (presumably from old age, but it is never addressed by Tolkien).

/It's dead, just leave it alone to wither and disappear in obscurity as it deserves.//You could just watch Band of Brothers to redress the balance if you want, apparently there weren't that many women in Easy Company.

Jim_Callahan:Um, the Maiar and Valar, iirc, do not reproduce in any fashion that could be mapped onto human sexuality, and only wear human forms because of the old "a form you are comfortable with". Note Sauron's remarkable lack of giving a shiat.

They don't seem to "reproduce among themselves" as it were, but they could reproduce with other races. Luthien was the daughter of Melian and Thingol (a Maia and an elf), for example.

Also, the article neglects to mention that all the giant, evil spiders are female. So there's that.

stevetherobot:miniflea: taurusowner: It was never confirmed that Bombadil was a Maia.

It wasn't, but what else could he be? For the record, I'm a big enough Tolkien fan that I reread the books roughly once a year or so, and most of the time i skip Bombadil's chapter.

I also don't really mind Arwen's expanded role in the films.

I don't see how he could have been a Maia. The wizards were Maia and they couldn't withstand the power of the Ring, while the Ring had no power over Bombadil.

/I usually skip the Bomabdil parts too.

Physically, the Istari were men*, and therefore subject in no small part to the power of the Ring, had any of them attempted to use it. Bombadil was as he always was. It's the difference between appearing as a man and actually physically being one.

Bombadil is described as being the first. Since he is obviously not a man, and elf or any other of the peoples of Middle Earth, what else could this refer to other than the first of the Ainur to have netered Arda at the very beginning of time?

If anyone has any other convincing arguments. fire away.

*based on a badly remembered passage from Unfinished Tales, which I lost my copy of years ago.

I still think Jackson should have hired actresses to play some of the dwarves, say Fili and Kili - and had no mention of it anywhere in the movie. Just treat them like interchangeable dwarves, like the rest of the cast. Put beards on them if you have to.

Luthien's Tempest:Am I the only one who is bothered by one of the races listed being "trees." As Treebeard said: "Tree? TREE? I am no tree. I'm an ent." Also, the entwives were mentioned, but not individuals by name, as they had gone missing. It was suggested that perhaps the moving trees in the Shire were the entwives.

And how are you supposed to tell the difference between dwarf men and women anyway? Sure, most of them are said to be male, but otherwise, it's kinda hard to tell...

One Entwife was mentioned by name. Fimbrethil: Treebeard's long-lost wife, also known as Wandlimb the lightfooted.

Purity Of Essence:miniflea: taurusowner: It was never confirmed that Bombadil was a Maia.

It wasn't, but what else could he be?

Tolkien believed the world contained mysteries that could never be understood. He intended Tom Bombadil to be the personification of that view. Any conclusions about Bombadil's nature beyond "unknown" are necessarily incorrect.

VonEvilstein:what else could this refer to other than the first of the Ainur to have netered Arda at the very beginning of time?

The SIlmarillion states that Melkor was the first of the Ainur to enter Varda long before anyone else. That's one of the reasons why Bombadil's story is confusing. It doesn't fit with any of the other established history.

Odd Bird:Luthien's Tempest: It was suggested that perhaps the moving trees in the Shire were the entwives.

And how are you supposed to tell the difference between dwarf men and women anyway? Sure, most of them are said to be male, but otherwise, it's kinda hard to tell...

I do not recall a reference to moving trees in the Shire. 'splain?

/it's the beards

At the beginning of The Fellowship of the Rings there is a section with hobbits gossiping about the recent increase in outsiders and strange creatures in the Shire. One Hobbit swears that he saw a walking tree.

SavageWombat:I still think Jackson should have hired actresses to play some of the dwarves, say Fili and Kili - and had no mention of it anywhere in the movie. Just treat them like interchangeable dwarves, like the rest of the cast. Put beards on them if you have to.

If nothing else, it would have caused discussion.

I have a few of the Terry Pratchett specials done by the BBC. There's a scene where dwarves race into the Broken/Mended drum during a bar fight. One of the extras playing a dwarf is a woman. Pratchett was right, there's what he calls a "tell" around the person's eyes that lets you know the character is female.

I suspect that JRR Tolkein's lack of attention to female characters is not just (as someone apty said above) that his university society was a sausagefest, but also due to him being uber Christian. My elderly Catholic aunties preferred to go see Broadway shows that were dramas without women because they did not like all that sinful "romance stuff". Tolkein's hands probably were shaking when he wrote the small snippets about Eowyn's eventual marriage.

taurusowner:VonEvilstein: what else could this refer to other than the first of the Ainur to have netered Arda at the very beginning of time?

The SIlmarillion states that Melkor was the first of the Ainur to enter Varda long before anyone else. That's one of the reasons why Bombadil's story is confusing. It doesn't fit with any of the other established history.

Guess I need to reread, don't I. First of the Maiar, perhaps?Otherwise first of what?I need answers, dammit.